Slick, fast-paced, tournament-based actioner that gave one time Bruce Lee co-star James Tien (‘Fist of Fury’, ‘The Big Boss’) a leading role, ‘Shaolin Boxers’ may be light on story but is big on action and fun.
An annual martial arts tournament in the village of Fukien is all but controlled by a gang of local thugs (led by Chu Mu, ‘The Invincible Iron Palm’) who rule the village and surrounding area with an iron fist. Tired of this injustice, the head of a local Shaolin school Chuan (Tien) enters the tournament intent on beating the hoodlums once and for all and vanquishing them from the village. However, despite his superior fight skills, Chuan finds it not so easy to accomplish as the head of the gang teams up with a kung fu master (Li Min-Lang) to make sure Chuan does not leave the competition victorious.
Mainly set in and around the tournament and the surrounding countryside of the village, ‘Shaolin Boxers’ spends most of its short running time cutting between Chuan (and his band of Shaolin school helpers) either fighting opponents in the tournament or rushing about stopping the local gang troubling the village residents. Frivolous of plot it may be (though there is some subplot about one of the bad guys being the killer of the lead’s mother, told via flashback!) but director Huang Ta (‘Chinese Hercules’) makes up for the lack of narrative meat by stuffing the film with superb fight action.
Overseen by an early in his choreography career Tony Ching Siu-Tung (‘The Heroic Trio’, ‘Swordsman 2’) the fight action is fast, fluid, and fantastic. Crisply choreographed the fight scenes may be void of Ching Siu-Tung’s trademark wire-fu infusion but they’re grounded for maximum impact and allow Tien, and a host of screen fighters, to be put through their paces culminating in an epic sustained showdown. ‘Shaolin Boxers’ was released at the height of the 1970s kung fu craze capitalizing on Bruce Lee’s success and the makers have packed the barely 80-minute runtime with as much fight action as they can.
On those simple pack-in-as-many-fights-as-possible terms, ‘Shaolin Boxers’ succeeds and thanks to Eureka’s new Blu Ray version the film looks fantastic and is buoyed by a groovy modern (of its time!) soundtrack making this a fast and fun old school fight flick.
Eureka Entertainment are bringing ‘Shaolin Boxers’ to UK Blu-ray on March 24, and you can order it now from Amazon.co.uk.
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